Small Business Shift

Linda Buquet at Catalyst eMarketing recently posted a story about hundreds of Google Places listings marked “Awaiting Removal.” A commenter did some sleuthing and discovered that these listings appear to be held hostage by a company called 411 Locals (link to ComplaintsBoard.com). What Went Wrong This isn’t the first or last time we’ll see something along these […]

One of the keys to ranking in local search are “local citations.” A citation is an appearance, anywhere on the web, of your business name along with its address or phone number. Google counts both the quality and quality of citations when ranking your business. To get started with gaining citations, check out my guide […]

Google scrapes reviews from other websites for Google Places. Traditionally, these came from large local review websites. But now you can get reviews from your site onto Places. Google is starting to include hReview formatted reviews from other websites – and even some from small businesses using hReview. Read on for an hReview how-to. What Is hReview? hReview […]

As a small business owner, you’ve always had to know a bit about everything. It’s time to add online marketing. The goal of this article is that when you finish reading, you’ll have enough knowledge to read more in-depth guides (or talk to a salesperson) without ending up lost. There’s a lot of information here, […]

Google announced a new service called Hotpot (notice it is “Hotpot” not “Hotspot”) a month or so ago. This could be important for local businesses, because Google plans to use Hotpot for tying together local business reviews and social data, which should make online reviews even more powerful in determining the success of a company. […]

TMP Directional Marketing/15Miles has released new survey results detailing the behavior of individuals looking for local business information.

Google announced support for rich snippets in local search on their blog yesterday. Adding this microformat information may help local search rankings – let’s look at what microformats are and how to add this data to your website.

I’ve been experimenting with Google Tags for about a month, and have some data to share.

Call tracking numbers are the most convenient way to track lead sources – but also harm rankings in local search.

Universal Business Listing is a service that lists your business in a wide variety of places across the Internet. This can be helpful, both for driving traffic to your website and increasing local search rankings